


Remember the rain

by Wakeywakey_bigmistakey



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Her Story, Lexa Centric, Nightbloods, canon adjacent, fuck u jason, i am still fucking bitter, she will not be dying
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-08
Updated: 2017-06-08
Packaged: 2018-11-10 22:41:08
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11136120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wakeywakey_bigmistakey/pseuds/Wakeywakey_bigmistakey
Summary: It begins and it ends in rain. Some of it is good, a lot of it isn't, but it's her story.orCharacter study of Lexa





	Remember the rain

The sky has cracked open and it feels as though nothing will ever get completely dry again. Every last sunbeam disappeared a long time ago, and darkness blankets the heavy forests. In a small village, hidden by the trees now blurred, a tiny face stares out the window that’s more of a hole in the wall, really. 

Completely fixated on the heavy drops thundering down, Lexa inhales once and feels cleansed. She might not be very old and can barely see over the edge of the wall, but she needs the calming smell of freshly fallen rain on a summer night.

Her parents doesn’t know that she heard them discussing it, but she did. 

Her parents hasn’t told her yet, so she keeps pretending that she doesn’t know.

The water on her cheeks are  not only from outside, because suddenly the memory that she is trying so very hard not to think of floods her mind, clawing it’s way into her conscious. 

A few days ago, when the tall men with scarred faces came to their little village and wanted to gather all of the kids together.  _ No harm will be done to them  _ they promised. They spoke briefly, harshly, with the elders before everyone young enough got sent to the dusty circle that makes out the center of the village. There, every single one of the children got poked with a very sharp, very thin knife. 

Lexa’s neighbor, a small boy that she never really spoke with, was the only one behind her in line when it was her turn, so she didn’t hide that she was shaking a little. Noticing her eyeing the instrument, the man in charge of the inexplicable poking smiled, just a little.  _ Don’t worry, it won’t hurt  _ he said.

Staring into the drenched forest, she can’t help but feel a sting of betrayal. It had and it does hurt, even though the procedure itself was quick and painless. 

Lexa has bled before. Lexa has fallen, she has cut herself accidentally, she has played too roughly sometimes. The thing is, no one ever seems to have noticed that her blood runs darker, runs black, until the men came.

The moment he saw it, he paused. Stared at her, stared at her parents, standing at the edge of the circle. He bent down and was still much bigger, much taller than her.  _ What is your name?  _ His voice trembled slightly, but she didn’t notice.  _ Lexa _ .

Her lip wobbles but she doesn’t cry.  _ Be brave, Lexa _ . It was the only thing he had said before going to her parents. Her parents who still hasn’t told her that she’s going away. That she’s never coming back. 

She heard them talk about it, later that evening. The last glow of the sun had filled their home, had spread golden beams across the forest. 

She’d been outside, playing with some of the other village kids, when she remembered that her mother had promised her to re-do her loose braids. They didn’t hear her enter, hushed voices clearly frantic, clearly anguished.

Lexa can’t remember everything they spoke of, understands even less of it, but  _ they’ll take her and we’ll never see her unless her fight ends too soon  _ is seared into her brain in her mother’s voice. 

The downpour stops but her tears don’t.  _ I’m going to die _ .

 

*********************************************************************************************************

 

It’s years later and training is hard, training is long, and training is, above all, the loneliest thing Lexa has ever done. They’re supposed to be hardened, to go through fire and only come out stronger, but she feels nothing like the steel Titus speaks of them as. 

She’s small, exceptionally so, and even the other  _ natblidas  _ that are her age towers above her. Lexa know that they feel good about this. That each one has counted her out, counted one less threat to their own survival. 

Titus says that death is not a necessity, it is an honour. To die, whether by the hand of whoever the next Heda is or by the sword of an enemy, it is a prideful thing. Not so secretly, she knows every single one of them, those whose blood flows raven, has a primal fear of it.

When she’s called forth into their makeshift arena, Lexa sighs. No new  _ natblida  _ has been discovered since her, so she’s perpetually the least graceful, the most beaten up by the end of the day, out of all her peers. 

Mercifully, it’s not one of the tallest or strongest that she has to fight today. She’s actually doing rather well for once, but then a flash of color catches her eye. It only takes that small distraction and a series of hits for Lexa to be laying flat on her back, aching all over.

It’s a butterfly; small, delicate and beautiful, that led her treacherous eyes off her opponent. She savours it, if only for a moment, the picture of innocence.

The harsh voice of Titus breaks her out of her reverie, back into the world of harsh blood and coldness, always with the icy coldness. 

It’s worth the scolding though, to have that small memory of a creature with no concept of prideful life or prideful death.  

 

*********************************************************************************************************  

 

Everything hurts. Her body is still tiny, still growing, and it is burning with a pain so intense that she thinks this will be it. There is a sort of calm in her mind, an acceptance. At least this way, she won’t ever have the blood of nations and a cloak heavier than the sky itself draped across her shoulders. 

She hears the healer murmur about poison, poisoning, to Titus, who is still looking unaffected by the fact that she is dying. Lexa heaves and coughs until it feels like her ribs are broken, until her chest burns and when she wipes her mouth, her tiny hand comes back with jet black streaks. 

It isn’t supposed to go like this.  She’s supposed to be heroic, to meet her fate with a raised sword, not curl into herself in a healer tent because someone decided to poison their training blades and she got her skin split first. 

Though her whole body protests, screams for her to just lie as still as absolutely possible, she fights her way into a sitting position. It isn’t supposed to go like this, but her whole life is made up of war and destruction and she refuses to let her death go the same way. Lexa never really liked fighting anyway.

With all the power of a determined child, because she still is a tiny, tiny child, she gets the attention of Titus and the healer.

‘I-’ she stutters, her voice raw and her throat aching, ‘-I would like to go outside, to the flowers.’

They both look at her, the healer with something akin to pain, something like sadness in her glistening brown eyes. Titus just looks.

‘I would like to die among flowers,’ she says, hoping they’ll deny it. Hoping they won’t. 

Another coughing fit wracks her body, sending flashes of agony coursing alongside the blood she never wanted.

Titus nods, an imperceptible something in the way he stares at her. Not warmth, not exactly, but respect. He respects, she thinks, death and taking control over it, above all.

She feels it in the way that he, alone, carries her slight figure in his arms. It’s the closest contact she’s felt in years and Lexa revels in it, in the way it reminds her of her father, of her mother.

Though he tries to be gentle, Lexa is cutting grimaces before they’re even out of the tent. The healer with the kind eyes is trailing behind them, smiling unconvincingly every time Lexa looks at her. 

The healer tent is near the outskirts of Polis, ready for when warriors return from far-away wars, so it’s not a long walk. Excruciating, yes, but not long. 

The sun cuts her eyes and she’s in excruciating pain, but it all fades away, just a little, when she’s gently laid on the softest grass she’s ever felt. She tilts her head and  sees flowers, pretty, delicate flowers in happy colors. Lexa loves colors.

She feels the mild sun on her face and smells the green, so green, grass. It’s the last things she sense before her body convulses and everything goes dark.

 

*********************************************************************************************************

 

There’s something running down her face. It’s cold. Lexa is aware of only two things, the first being that she’s probably definitely not dead. The second is that, for the first one to be true, that would mean that the chilly feeling on her forehead is not some kind of afterlife-exclusive deal.

Her eyelids are heavier than what she can lift, though she tries valiantly. Her fingers twitch.  _ I still have fingers _ , she thinks. Finally, after what feels like longer than she’s entitled to, Lexa coerces her eyes into cooperation and slams them open.

There is a crash and something quiet, something murmured, something like a swear, in the softest voice Lexa has ever heard. She’s blinking quickly, trying to adjust to the harsh light of day.

Once she can finally see clearly, she loses her breath completely. In front of her is the most beautiful girl she has ever laid her eyes on. Soft black curls framing a round face, with eyes that Lexa could swear she’s seen before.

The girl is staring back. Her features contain none of the destruction Lexa sees when she looks in a mirror, just gentle compassion.

‘I’m sorry, you startled me,’ the girl says, smiling ever so slightly. Lexa, to her own massive surprise, smiles back like it's second nature.

‘Don’t worry about it,’ she says, ‘but could you tell me where I am?’

What she wants to ask anyone but this stranger, this stranger with stars in her eyes and gentleness in her voice, what she wants to ask anyone but the only person who's treated her like a human in years, is  _ how am I alive? I was supposed to die. _

Lexa doesn’t, though. 

‘In Polis. You where poisoned,’ Lexa nods to indicate she remembers this fact, ‘and they thought you’d die. No one knows exactly how, or why, but you didn’t,’ at this, the stranger’s lips curl slightly upwards and Lexa wonders when she lost her ability to keep a neutral face, ‘so here we are. It’s been about three days.’

Lexa doesn’t know what to do with herself, or rather with the girl who isn’t leaving, so instead of letting the opportunity for actual human interaction slip, she asks a question: ‘Who are you?’

She beams, and Lexa discovers that she has the most amazing dimples.

‘I’m Costia, the healer’s daughter.’

'My guardian angel.'

**Author's Note:**

> I just really miss Lexa y'all


End file.
